


Waiting for Go... dot dot dot

by Deastar



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little girl and a vampire sit down on a park bench…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for Go... dot dot dot

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please, _please_ forgive the title. I honestly could not help myself. I tried. I really did.

A man is sitting on a bench in the afternoon. He's bent over, elbows resting on his thighs, squinting against the bright sunlight as he watches the people walking by.

A little girl plops herself down on the bench. She's wearing white sneakers that she can lace up all by herself, and a Disney Princess backpack.

The girl stares up at the sky, but there aren't any clouds, so it's not very interesting. Then she looks down at the pavement, but there aren't any ants, so that's not very interesting either.

Finally, she looks over at the man in the black jacket.

"My name's Jillian," she announces. "What's yours?"

"Damon," the man says curtly.

The girl wrinkles her nose. "That's a stupid name."

The man turns his head to look incredulously at the girl, and says, "What?" Then, "Shut up! It is not!"

"It is so," she counters. "It's a weird name. None of my friends are named Damon."

The man's eyes narrow. "Then your friends suck."

Huffing, the little girl glares right back. It's surprisingly intimidating. "My friends are awesome," she says, in a tone that brooks no disagreement. "I bet they're better than your friends."

Turning back to look into the distance, the man says, "I don't have any friends." His voice is empty of any self-pity or regret.

"Oh," the girl says, looking uncomfortable.

They sit in silence.

"You can be my friend," she offers, finally.

"I thought I had a stupid name," the man replies, unashamedly petty.

"You only had a stupid name 'cause I didn't have any friends named Damon, but if you are my friend, then I do have a friend named Damon, so it's not stupid." The little girl nods, and her pigtails bob up and down with the motion of her head.

"Your logic is impeccable," he says dryly.

She frowns. "I don't know what that means."

"It means you're very smart."

The girl looks at him warily – she's not sure he really meant it – but after a second, she just shrugs and says, "I know."

In the maple tree behind the bench, a grackle squawks. The little girl looks up at the sky again, but it hasn't gotten any more interesting since the last time she looked.

"I'm waiting for my mom," she informs the man.

"Mm," he says, noncommittally.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

The man leans back and sets his arm on the back of the bench, looking down at the girl. Her shirt is very pink.

"I'm waiting for my brother."

"Is he loud?" she asks, and the man blinks.

"Is he… loud?" he repeats, non-plussed. "No. No, Stefan's pretty quiet."

"_My_ brother is _very_ loud." The girl makes a face that somehow manages to convey both how put-upon she is by this fact, and how little sympathy she has thus far managed to garner for her plight.

The man tries unsuccessfully not to laugh under his breath, but the girl doesn't mind.

"I know it's not his fault," she explains. "He's little. But at dinner, it's the worst! He hates the food from the little jars, so he screams and screams – but it's baby food, and he's a baby, so it's what he's supposed to eat! He's such a picky baby. Sometimes I just want to yell at him, 'Eat the stuff you're supposed to eat, arrrgh!'"

"Sing it, sister," the man mutters.

The girl blinks at him. "I don't know what that means either."

"It means little brothers are a pain."

The little girl chews on her lip, looking uncomfortable again. "I don't think he's a pain. Well… sometimes he's a pain. But it's not nice to say that, because I love him. Mommy says we're going to be friends forever, and I'm going to take care of him."

"That's one way it could go," the man says. "Or he could ruin your life, destroy the one thing you love most in the world, and then whine about your eating habits for the rest of all eternity."

The girl looks at him doubtfully, pulling her right knee up under her chin. "I don't think that's going to happen," she says.

"That's what I thought, too." He narrows his eyes at something invisible in the distance. "They start out cute and cuddly, and the next thing you know, they dose your drink and lock you in the basement."

The little girl tries to unobtrusively scoot a couple of inches away from the middle of the bench.

The man stares at thin air for a little longer, and then his focus breaks, and he turns back to the girl.

"Or you could be OMG, BFFs!" he exclaims brightly.

"Right," the girl says slowly. "You're weird."

He looks injured, and places a hand over his heart dramatically.

"I thought we were friends!"

Relenting, the girl says, "We are. So I guess it's okay."

"Damon," a voice calls – a man in a white shirt is walking toward the bench, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

"This is the brother I told you about," the man confides in the girl. "His name is Stefan. Don't you think that's a stupid name?"

The girl hesitates, caught between honesty and the loyalty of friendship.

"He's your brother—"

"Tell me the truth," he admonishes. "Friends shouldn't lie."

"It is a stupid name," she admits.

The other man arrives at the bench just in time to catch her words.

"What's a stupid name?" he asks, looking confused.

"Stefan is," the man on the bench says, grinning wickedly and stretching his other arm across the back of the bench like he owns it.

"It is pretty lame," the girl agrees, giving the name's owner a sympathetic look.

"Jillian says so," the man says to his brother, eyes wide with sincerity. "Sorry, bro."

The man in the white shirt sighs. "Isn't this a little low even for you?"

"Oh, I hope so." The man on the bench gives the other man a sunny smile, which is met with another long-suffering sigh and rolled eyes.

"Let's go, Damon."

The man on the bench stands up to go, then turns back to the little girl.

"What's your mom's name, Jillian?"

"Amanda. Um, Amanda Lewis. My dad is Greg Lewis."

"Lewis," the man repeats. "And where do you live?"

The girl gives him a disapproving look. "I'm not supposed to tell that to strangers."

He points at her jauntily, smiling broadly. "That's smart. You never know about strangers – I hear some of them are dangerous." For a brief second, there's something funny about his eyes, but when the girl looks closer, it's gone.

"Come _on_, Damon."

"Coming, coming. Goodbye, Jillian."

"Goodbye, Damon," the girl says, waving one small hand and listening to the two men talk as they walk away.

"Why did you ask her about her parents, Damon?" The white-shirted man asks in a low, wary voice.

"Because I don't play with my food," the other man replies airily.

As the girl tries to figure out what that means, the white-shirted man's face writes a memoir of more than a hundred years.

"Okay, I _do_," the other man says, rolling his eyes. "But." He shrugs.

The men keep walking, farther away from the bench, and just as they're about to pass out of the girl's hearing, one of the men says, "Stefan is not a stupid name."

"It really is," she hears, and then the men are gone.


End file.
